President Joe Biden faces what he calls two possibly existential conflicts. The first is the struggle between autocracy and democracy. The second was declared last week in Philadelphia: the fight for the soul of the nation against Trump “MAGA Republicans.”
This column disagrees that the great struggle is between democracy and autocracy. The crucial question is whether democracies can function effectively, not whether they will succumb to autocracies. In the second fight, nations have no souls. Democratic nations have publics, constitutions, written or otherwise, and political systems.
As the president correctly pointed out, the political basis for America’s democracy is the Constitution. And the Constitution is under assault. However, the assailants are not only “MAGA Republicans.” This is a bipartisan attack with both parties responsible.
The Constitution is predicated on checks and balances. These have become badly unbalanced. Nowhere are political parties cited in that document. Indeed, the Founding Fathers eschewed “factions” as surrogates for political parties. Political parties continue to dominate politics. Yet, along the way, both political parties have proven incapable of properly governing.
What makes this situation even more desperate is that the forces creating this threat to the Constitution have also ironically conspired to turn China and Russia from competitors into enemies. The White House, Congress and the public have failed to recognize and understand these grotesque transformations and the grave dangers posed by each that threaten the nation and beyond. How did this happen?
The unraveling of the Constitution probably began with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in August 1964 and America’s descent into the Vietnam disaster. At that point, about 3/4 of Americans expressed full trust and confidence in government. Nearly sixty year later, no former and current president and current Congress and Supreme Court have ever been held in such low public standing.
Today, few American institutions are trusted. The public is irreversibly divided along partisan lines on virtually every issue. Even the Covid-19 crisis in which over one million Americans have died failed to unite and indeed further divided the nation over vaccines, masks and shutdowns.
Civility and open discourse have vanished. Each party now views the other as the enemy. Worse, compromise on which the Constitution rests means capitulation or appeasement. And when there is rare bipartisan agreement such as on Gun Control, that law will have little impact on reducing gun violence.
As a result, America is a mess: the southern border and illegal immigration are in disarray; there is no viable energy or climate change policy; inflation and debt swell; 3/4 of Americans see the country headed in the wrong direction; and about half fear the onset of a civil war.
This vindictiveness and anger were manifested in the president’s Philadelphia speech. The president acknowledged all Republicans were not Trump MAGA Republicans. But the latter, Biden claimed, were destroying the soul of the nation. Many of the some seventy-million Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 must have taken offense. This is not necessarily the best approach to unify a nation if that were possible. The same characterization applies to foreign policy.
How Democrats view Republicans and vice versa is how Congress and the president regard China and Russia. For example, the trips of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional delegations to Taiwan could not have been better timed to provoke China. Why?
Yes, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. But that does mean foreclosing all engagement to seek an end to the fighting in Ukraine. The US negotiated with Red China as UN soldiers were dying on Korea’s 38th parallel and with the North Vietnamese as US servicemen were being killed in South Vietnam.
Internationally, the US has stumbled into a two-front conflict with China and Russia. The National Defense Strategy (NDS) calls for containing, deterring and if war comes, defeating both. That strategy is unachievable, unexecutable and unaffordable.
No one has explained why China and Russia are enemies or what are the actual as opposed to hypothetical threats emanating from each. Nor has anyone asked whether the US bears any responsibility for this precipitous decline in relations. In the current septic political environment, those questions would be considered, as with any domestic compromise, appeasement or capitulation.
Never before in its history has the United States been confronted with such dangerous and simultaneous threats from home and abroad. Some are of our own making. But will America ever reverse this perilous state of affairs?
4 thoughts on “Opinion: The Soul of The Nation Is the Constitution – Harlan Ullman”
The “unraveling” of our constitution began is the 1930’s as German Communists came to America and taught in our colleges and universities. Also, our public school text books on American history have failed in explaining and describing how our constitution was created that hot-muggy Summer of 1787. “Miracle at Philadelphia” by Catherine Drinker Bowen is a wonderful read on that Summer the constitution was argued out ; mainly from actual notes taken in convention and local news stories on the representatives themselves. Diluting American history was and is further eliminated and distorted by large states selection of text books demanding a more weakened portrayal of history. What has occurred over 100 years cannot be undone in 1-2 elections. It will require a total revamping of our K-12 educational system. Shall we begin in November?
You confuse me Mr. Steele, how exactly has the constitution been unraveled? Pretty sure all of the amendments are still there. How was the German Bundt able to do this unraveling? Also, the German Bund were not communists, the Nazis gained power in Germany by fighting against communists. The Bund was made up of fascists who wanted the U.S. to become a fascist country like Germany, but the Bund ended up being wildly unsuccessful at achieving their goals. They were outed when Germany started invading peaceful countries. The U.S. population wanted nothing to do with that kind of recklessness. Although, the U.S. population had a lot of racist behavior towards those of the Jewish faith and ethnic Jews, they knew Hitler was up to no good.
Forget history, the threat to our Constitution is here and now and it’s a whole different beast.
The Radical Left see the US Constitution as an obstacle between them and the money they want to steal. As a result, the Radical Left is trying to destroy the US Constitution and they’ll use any disgusting trick in the book to get their way. The Radical Left is the real threat to our Republic. They’ll lie, cheat, steal and twist words to make it look like they’re the GREAT SAVIORS OF OUR DEMOCRACY, but they are not.
We all need to fight the vile, filthy Radical Left attacks on our Constitution WITH VIGAH (to quote the great John F. Kennedy).
Simple as that.
Huh?
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